Tag Archives: sahara reporters

I have been admiring the actions in this video since I first saw it six weeks ago when Mr. Omoyele Sowore, founder of Sahara Reporters, and his comrades pulled this off. This event, where Nigerian Minister of State Viola Onwuliri was supposed to explain the “virtues” of the radical removal of fuel subsidies in Nigeria effective January 1, was essentially prevented from happening by the revolutionaries in the room, after the “honorable” minister was shamelessly late to her own event, dishonoring everyone present on that front alone. Brother Sowore has been upstaging Nigerian politicians in their NY diplomatic theater events for some time now, operating with the “this is not Nigeria” philosophy that if there’s any place we can call these people out for the thieves and liars they are, it is here in New York. Most politicians in New York City and in America are also disgusting thieves and scoundrels of the lowest order, but for the purposes of this post I will discuss the international, particularly African thieves of state who visit for “diplomatic” reasons. Wherever and whenever they try to make noises about how some new policy that’s supposed to slaughter and consume the poor is actually good for them somehow, and try to convince a misinformed or bourgeois crowd that black is white, people like Omoyele Sowore, people like us, should do our utmost to make them uncomfortable, and make business as usual impossible. Revolution depends on us exposing the absurdity and inhumanity of the status quo, and it also depends on us creating and living, right now, the new norms by which we would prefer the world would operate – the Chomsky approach.

Comrade Sowore and his heroic brothers in this scenario provide an excellent and proper example for how to push forward the African revolution today. The crimes of the political class in the nation-states across Africa must be exposed everywhere. They must be explained to African people clearly, fully, and passionately. More of us, myself included, must become passionate about the African revolution. In this instance, even if ever so briefly, the good guys won the day, and they could make clear to anybody that such was the case. The greedy and wasteful political masters could not withstand the passion and the power of truth that brother Sowore and his colleagues threw at them.

Personas like Minister of State Viola Onwuliri are in fact the enemy. Anyone who defends the status quo, a status quo which is tailor made to destroy life for poor everyday Africans, is an enemy. Anyone who benefits from the status quo, who dines and lives large at the expense of the masses of suffering people, is an enemy. There is no future for them, no future for their politics, no future for their ideology, no future for their misleadership.

We are our own leaders, our own heroes, our own hope. It is we working-class hardscrabble Africans who, armed with knowledge, passion, and fearlessness, will revolutionize Africa until it is a land that provides all its citizens with a chance to thrive, create, innovate, and win. We are the majority, and those of us still blinded by the strange floodlights of heads of state, ministers and governors are dwindling among us, the truth of suffering making them question the fundamental construct of their reality.

A liberated Nigeria belonging to and run by the people of Nigeria would be a land of immense prosperity and productivity. A liberated Congo belonging to and run by the people of Congo would be a land of incredible bounty to Africa and the world. A liberated Senegal, a liberated Ghana, a liberated Liberia, a liberated Uganda likewise.

A united Africa, a union of the subaltern, of the oppressed throwing off the mindset of misery and building the will to win with the power of knowledge, would accomplish untold greatness.

But it starts with the boldness of men and women like Omoyele Sowore and men and women like you, transforming your individual lives, your families, and your communities with the passion and vision of what a liberated Africa would mean.

This boldness is a template for the revolutionary African in the 21st century, upstaging the thieves and cowards wherever they are and building the revolution right in the place where they stand.

I leave it to the Nigerian funk-masters the Action 13 who in the 1970s said what needs to be done today – GET… MORE… BREAD…. TO THE PEOPLE!